The Library of Congress is hosting a special one-day immersive exhibition on the over four decades of sound Metzner has collected from around the globe. Last fall, his archive was added to the Library’s collection. He’ll sit down with “Radiolab” creator Jad Abumrad to talk about why he’s dedicated his life to collecting aural impressions of life on earth.
“My hope is that in being in an archive and being in the Library of Congress, it allows my work and the work of other soundscapers, people who record sounds and do oral histories and do radio programs, that comes to the attention of the American public and gets to be appreciated in a way that perhaps it isn't so much,” Metzner told WAMC. “We know what documentary photography is. We know certainly what good fine music is. We know what fine art is. But most people wouldn't necessarily think of sound, unless you're a musician, perhaps, in that category. And yet, I'm here to suggest that recording a soundscape is worthy of our attention, and it is, in a sense, an art form. I'd like to believe that that was part of what made my work attractive, perhaps worthy of sharing with others in the future.”
To illustrate his point, Metzner shared two stories in sound with WAMC. The first comes from a trip to Brazil in the 70s, which he recorded for release as part of his music magazine series “Sound Image.”
“Every day in Salvador, capital of Bahia, there would be this crowd of people in the distance,” he said. “We’d hear the crowd sounds and somebody speaking over a terrible sound system, obviously, in Portuguese, and then people would be singing and chanting. And we said, what is that? And we were told – I mean, thousands of people – and we were told that, oh, that's this evangelist who meets at this, in this gathering place every day. And people were there, coming, and they were obviously- He was, he really worked the crowd, he had them in the palm of his hand. And imagine thousands of people, each of them holding up their hands, and in their hands are maybe a scarf or a piece of clothing or a photograph of someone who they're bringing to him to be blessed or cured, because they have a problem. A whole thousands of people. The sound was terrible over these really crummy speakers, and the only way to record it would be to, you guessed it, wade through this crowd of people who were really in another state and to get to the middle of it where this guy was. Now, when I say another state, I'll give you an example: All of a sudden, somebody would fall to the ground in the frenzy and start eating dirt or something like that. People were in that kind of a frenzy.”
Dressing himself in what Metzner describes as his “cloak of invulnerability” – his headset, microphones, and recorder – he waded into the crowd.
“And then we get to this, it's like a boxing ring in the middle,” Metzner continued. “And I didn't know what was going to happen. They'd never seen me before. By the way, I looked sort of like the Man from Mars. I had three microphones, I had this thing on, I had this giant recorder. So, the guy- The evangelist’s handler or whoever he was looks at me, and the next thing I know he gives me, he says something to the evangelist, and the evangelist, I guess, acquiesces and they give me a hand. And next thing I know, I'm on this, onstage in this arena surrounded by these throngs of people. And the recording that ensued is of this evangelist actually curing a woman, and actually jumping down and grabbing her, she was possessed, and grabbing her by the hair and pulling her up by her hair, at which point she or anybody in that position would scream, which she does, and he's shouting ‘embora, embora’ – away, away – chasing the bad spirits away. That was a moment I can assure I never experienced as a kid growing up in Forest Hills, New York. I never experienced anything like that in my lifetime or thought I would. But that moment is there in sound, and that's the story. And then two weeks later, the police raided this guy. There was a big riot and people were killed.”
The second story he shared comes from the village of Karanos on the island of Crete.
“The story was of being at this festival, cherry festival, being the only off-islander invited, myself and my friend and translator and colleague,” said Metzner. “And we're at this cherry festival where everybody in the village gets up and dances- Everybody, the priests, the mayor, the teachers, the poets, the fishers, whoever they might be, they all get up and dance at a certain point. And we as honored guests were invited to dance too. And then the Cretans who, whenever they're having a good time, they would, everybody, many of them, are packing, and they'll just fire off a round of gunshots into the air. Nobody blinks. It's like firecrackers for us. And then being taken after this wonderful festival, we’re tired, one of the younger men comes over, he says, we like you, we like you, now the real thing is going to begin, you want to come with us and the group of the other men? We're going to start the real celebration. And then we’re invited into this group of mostly men at that point where it evolved, or you might say devolved, into a group of just men singing their hearts out.”
Even after years of immersing himself in sound, Metzner is as fascinated by the experience as he ever has been.
“What interests me is about what listening is, how mysterious a phenomenon is this experience, this process that we all think we know have experienced of what listening is,” he told WAMC. “And yet, I call it a mystery, because it's beyond what my understanding of it is. Because someone really listens to me, I feel it, and that it changes everything.”
Jim Metzner’s audio installation at the Library of Congress is open from 10 to 8 Thursday, with the talk at 7 p.m. Now in his mid-70s, Metzner ended his run of new daily radio “Pulse of the Planet” episodes last year.
